Voting Cycles and Types of Changes

Votes on foundational changes, such as block version, span 32 epochs and demand a 90% miner consensus. Everyday changes, like block size adjustments, require only a simple majority. Each block allows miners to cast votes for up to two everyday changes and one foundational change. These votes are included in the block's header.

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Voting Mechanics

Affirmative Votes

To vote "Yes" for a change at the beginning of an epoch, a miner places the change's identifier directly into the block header.

Negative or Neutral Votes

To vote "No" or abstain, a miner enters a zero value in place of the identifier byte in the block header.

System Constants

Epoch length for voting: 1024 blocks
Epochs needed for foundational change: 32
Epochs before activating approved foundational change: 128

Current Network Settings

Maximum block size: 1271009 bytes
Maximum box size: 4096 bytes
Maximum transaction size: 96kb

Parameters Table

The following table describes vote identifiers, default values (during launch), possible steps, and minimum and maximum values.

If the step is not defined in the table, its value is defined as max(floor(current_value / 100), 1).
If the minimum value for a parameter is not defined, it equals zero.
If the maximum value is not defined, it equals 1,073,741,823.

A miner includes a parameter identifier (id) into the block header to propose or vote for increasing a parameter. If the miner supports decreasing the parameter, they would include (-id) into the block header.

Try out these parameters on deadit.github.io/paizo/

ID	Description	Default	Step	Min	Max
1	Storage fee factor (per byte storage period)	1250000	25000	0	2500000
2	Minimum monetary value of a box	360	10	0	10000
3	Maximum block size	524288	—	16384	—
4	Maximum cummulative computational cost of a block	1000000	—	16384	—
5	Token access cost	100	—	—	—
6	Cost per one transaction input	2000	—	—	—
7	Cost per one data input	100	—	—	—
8	Cost per one transaction output	100	—	—	—
120	Soft-fork (increasing version of a block)	—	—	—	—

Parameter values are to be written into the extension section on the first block of a voting epoch, that is, in the extension of a block when its height mod 1024 = 0. Parameters for the initial moment of time (height = 1) are hardcoded.

How to Propose and Vote for Changes

To propose a change, a miner includes the vote identifier in the first block's header of a voting epoch. The header has three slots: two for everyday changes and one for soft forks. A zero should be set in any unoccupied slot. Votes can be arranged in any sequence.

For example, if a miner proposes to increase the storage fee factor and also initiate a soft-fork, they would input (0, 1, 120) in the header slots.